Category Archives: Conference Reporting

There is a dominant narrative in Africa about ‘Africa rising’, however the bulk of the African people are not really feeling this growth in their pockets. Why? What Africa is rising?

African growth has doubled the average growth rate of the 1990s. Between 2000 and 2011, six of the world’s fastest growing economies were in Africa—Angola, Chad, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Rwanda Continue reading →

The EADI conference has closed its doors. What the conference has shown us is that the debate on inequality and the rise of the middle class in developing countries opens many windows of opportunity to reframe development and development policy as a universal issue.

The Broker reported from the EADI general conference “Responsible Development in a Polycentric World: Inequality, Citizenship and the Middle Classes”. Read the full coverage on The Broker

The WG workshop has been structured in two sessions. The first one on “Mobilisation and Managing of Financial Resources and International Financial Flows in Developing Countries” dealt with the mobilisation of domestic resources with three presentations on taxation and tax evasion, consequences of capital flights in DCs and effectiveness of development of local taxation systems. Continue reading →

While development practitioners and researchers both share the ultimate goal of fostering economic development, the ways in which these two groups work to achieve this goal are often polarized. In Germany, in particular, recent surveys conducted by the Poverty Reduction Equity and Growth Network (PEGNet) indicate that development practitioners do not base their work on results obtained from development research and vice-versa. Motivated by this evident gap, PEGNet initiated the Best Practice Award to recognise projects that have successfully managed to achieve effective interaction and cooperation between research and practice. This year, the Best Practice Award will be awarded for the sixth time at the PEGNet Annual Conference that will be held in Lusaka, Zambia on September 18 and 19. Continue reading →

This panel addresses the subjective effects of inequality on the lives on young people in four countries, Ethiopia, Colombia, Vietnam and Nigeria. It discusses how young people in these countries have to deal with political and economic challenges as well as with social structures and their inequalities within them. Different aspects of these challenges and intersecting effects of potential vulnerabilities are explored such as religion and gender and how these challenges and vulnerabilities impact on the lives of the young people and their aspirations. Continue reading →

The panel started with Gilles Carbonnier’s presentation on the recent EADI policy paper “North-South Research Partnership: Academia Meets Development?” which is based on the 2-years work of the EADI sub-committee on research partnerships. The initiative of looking at the North-South research partnerships was motivated by shifts in the aid paradigm and the increasing need to address global challenges through effective, equitable partnerships involving Northern and Southern researchers alike. The report investigated how the instrumental and normative perspectives on partnerships discussed for decades in the field of international development cooperation apply in the sphere of academic North-South collaboration. Continue reading →

The gender panel was part of the ‘Civic Innovation Research Initiative’ (CIRI) of the Institute of Social Studies Erasmus University looked at the changing dynamics in women’s movements due to new global political and economic arrangements. The three papers examined the challenges and difficulties faced by Egyptian women during the ‘Arab Spring’; Iranian women’s contribution to the green revolution reflecting on the growing diaspora of Iranian feminists; and the responses of youth and women’s solidarity movements to the economic crises hitting southern Europe. Continue reading →

Concerns about the need to strengthen accountability and increase the transparency of aid have become more prominent in recent years. Stronger accountability mechanisms are expected to have a positive influence on aid effectiveness by incentivising those responsible for implementing development interventions to provide better services. Accountability in development cooperation is, however, a complex issue because multiple stakeholders, who are often accountable to many different actors, are involved. In addition, the multitude of accountability relations can sometimes lead to conflicting demands and fosters inequality in terms of access to information and policy processes by domestic and international stakeholders. Continue reading →

Understanding Frugal Innovation in Africa: Schumpeter Revisited: Africa’s economy is growing rapidly, but transforming slowly. The perceived backwardness of Africa regarding technology may be challenged by studies from the informal sector because they suggest that innovation does exist.

2014 is the International Year of Family Farming and Smallholder Farming. Smallholders help to provide food for the growing world population with an increasing demand of food, feed and renewable energies, to create and preserve jobs in rural areas, to stem the rural exodus and show a strong resilience to external shocks. Smallholder farmers cultivate only 10% of the agricultural land worldwide, yet they produce up to 20% of the global food supply and play even the major part of the low-income economies. Continue reading →